News Release
Sandra K. Oza, M.D., M.A., Named Inaugural Assistant Dean for Learning Communities at Einstein
December 4, 2023
December 4, 2023—(BRONX, NY)—Sandra K. Oza, M.D., M.A., has been named the inaugural assistant dean for learning communities at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Oza is a general internist and associate professor of medicine in the division of general internal medicine, and currently serves as co-director of the Introduction to Clinical Medicine (ICM) and Transition to Clerkship (TTC) courses at Einstein.
“Dr. Oza has demonstrated her deep dedication to Einstein’s medical students and outstanding expertise in advancing innovative approaches to supporting the full student experience,” said Yaron Tomer, M.D., the Marilyn and Stanley M. Katz Dean at Einstein and chief academic officer at Montefiore Medicine. “In this new role, she will become a leader in the College of Medicine’s medical education program and ensure our students are given the support and resources they need to fulfill their potential as physicians and achieve their career goals. I couldn’t be more pleased that she has agreed to take on this critically important new position.”
In her new role as assistant dean, Dr. Oza will lead the design, implementation, and ongoing functioning of learning communities at Einstein. These learning communities will function to support students' professional identity formation through coaching, career advising, longitudinal clinical skills training, observation, and assessment. A major function of the learning communities will be to support Einstein students' holistic development into highly competent and compassionate physicians who can effectively respond to the needs of diverse patients and communities.
Dr. Oza joined Montefiore Einstein in 2015 as an attending physician at the Montefiore Family Care Center. In 2017, she became the co-director of the ICM course, and in 2019, co-director of the TTC course. As a leader in ICM, Dr. Oza has spearheaded innovations in the teaching and assessment of hypothesis-driven physical examination, advanced the clinical reasoning curriculum, and, during the COVID pandemic, safely and successfully ran one of the only in-person physical exam courses in the NYC area. Dr. Oza has been a co-director of the TTC since its inception, and over the last four years has built an engaging, hands-on, skills-based curriculum designed to bridge the gap between the pre-clerkship curriculum and clinical rotations, and to prepare students for success on the wards.
Dr. Oza has demonstrated her deep dedication to Einstein’s medical students and outstanding expertise in advancing innovative approaches to supporting the full student experience.
Dean Yaron Tomer, M.D.
Dr. Oza also teaches medical students in the internal medicine clerkship and acting internship, and in family medicine and primary care clerkship. She has served on the clinical skills assessment committee since 2016 and has been co-chair of the competency-based medical education-student assessment subcommittee since 2017. Her scholarly interests include clinical skills teaching and assessment, clinical reasoning teaching and assessment, and professional identity formation.
Dr. Oza graduated from Princeton University with a degree in molecular biology and completed medical school at New York University School of Medicine. She completed her internal medicine and primary care residency training at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Oza then completed a general internal medicine/clinician educator fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco, and received a Master of Arts in education at the University of California, Berkeley.
